Vacation and a taste of location independent work

Wondering how working location independent would be, I tried to test this while taking a brief vacation to Suriname in South America, where WiFi and Internet are not always working optimal.

A couple of months ago I decided to take some time off from work to be with my mom for Mother’s Day. My dad passed away less than a year ago and with all her children living abroad, I just couldn’t imagine myself calling to wish her a happy Mother’s Day!
With me there, she would have at least have one daughter around. She was so happy it made me realize this had been the right decision, even if it meant I had to miss having Mother’s Day with my own kids. She suffered enough loneliness in the past few months, so I was glad she wants to come back with me for a few months vacation.

I am enjoying my vacation which so far existed of eat, drink, sleep, movies, late-night talks with mom, but you can only do so much of that. I planned to work a little but since I don’t have a light laptop, I left it home. Who wants to lug a 6-pound laptop around during a grueling 18-hour trip with switching planes and long layovers? Instead I packed my iPad, my iPhone and a small notepad. I made sure to upload my working files to the cloud using One Drive, Google drive and Evernote.

I have to admit that I’m still experimenting with these, but once I figure out which works best for me, I will probably use only one or two of these. Already found out that I cannot open Excel files in Google Drive on my mobile devices. I may have to install the Excel app first. Good thing I thought about uploading some of my working files to Evernote too, where any file opens seamlessly.

My sister and I recently started collaborating online through OneDrive and OneNote, so we wouldn’t have to email each other huge attachments. Although we both have Evernote, I haven’t looked into collaboration with this tool yet, and since my sister doesn’t have a Google account, OneDrive works best for now. Again, we’re fairly new to this, so we’re both learning as we go along.

Today was a tropical, rainy day, but I enjoyed working on an upcoming course, sitting in a hammock on my moms balcony without getting wet. I was truly working as a location independent, well at least I got a taste of what Grace and I want to do one day. Thankfully Wi-Fi at mom’s house works well and this post was written and published during my stay.

If you have Internet you can do anything (online)!

Stay tuned for more info of my brand new course.